The present invention relates to a method of flavoring fried foods and products resulting therefrom. Specifically, the invention is directed to the use of encapsulated flavoring agents, such as spices, to flavor fried foods.
It is often desirable when preparing food products to add flavoring agents such as spices. In the context of fried food the flavoring agents are either applied directly to the surface of the food, or incorporated in a batter or breading applied to the product before frying. As an alternative, the flavoring may be incorporated internally in the product; such as by being mixed with ingredients which are later formed into distinct food products before frying, or by injection into solid food products to be fried.
A common problem with frying food products is that the oil used for frying becomes contaminated with material from the products being fried. Filtration of the oil is useful to remove particles large enough to be retained by the filter, but smaller particles, or especially material dissolved in the oil, are very difficult to remove. Sometimes, of course, removal is not necessary if foods fried subsequently are not detrimentally affected by the contamination in the oil. However, if the material degrades after a time in the hot oil, or if a different product is to be fried in the oil which would be detrimentally affected by the presence of the material, removal is required. In many instances it may be less expensive to discard the oil than to remove the contamination.
One material that is commonly used for flavoring foods is oleoresin capsicum, hereinafter "ORC". ORC is the hot, oil portion of red pepper. To obtain a hot and spicy flavor in a product such as fried chicken, ground red pepper could be sprinkled on the surface of the chicken, injected along with a water solution into the chicken, or added to the breading material applied to the outside of the chicken. It has been found, however, that the ORC in the red pepper thus applied to the chicken is leached into the oil during the frying process, and is not removed by regular filtration methods. In the case of the injected red pepper, it is speculated that the water which comes out of the chicken during frying carries the ORC with it, and the ORC remains in the oil. Besides being dissolved in the oil during the frying process, a significant amount of ORC is released into the atmosphere, making it nearly impossible for personnel to work around the frying equipment without protective apparatus.
Because ORC is not removed during filtration, chicken subsequently fried in the same oil picks up ORC with the oil absorbed by the chicken during the frying operation. With the level of ORC left behind after frying a hot flavored chicken product, the regular flavor fried chicken picks up a noticeable hot flavor. One solution would be to use the oil to fry only hot flavored chicken. The cost of equipment for such a dedicated fryer system is quite high, however, and the aforementioned safety problems still exist. In addition, with time, the ORC in the hot oil degrades. Also, the level of hot flavor in each batch of chicken would be different, depending on the amount of ORC in the oil, which in turn would depend on the previous number of batches of hot flavored chicken fried in the oil.